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[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

:( Your feelings Ray, are also being echoed in Richards thread here http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=243527 It truly is amazing, just how much this one program/application from Microsoft, has created such a dedicated and discerning following from so many people around the globe. :(

Dave,Thanks for pointing me to Richard's message. I remember most of that with equal fondness. I wonder what happened to good old Eric Ernst. What a pity we couldn't have more people like that in the community.If FS was still in its primitive stages with wired buildings and a few dozen airports worldwide it would be desperately sad for FS to be terminated. But in FS9 and FSX we have an excellent base for 3rd party software so I see no need to jump ship as others have alluded to.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

No chance. FSX was the first step in moving away from simulation and into gaming. It was with FSX that MS already lost a significant portion of simmers. Although I admit that the performance issue was there as well, it is not the key factor holding many people back. But let's not go over that again.No, I have always been a supporter of MS, but with FSX, Vista and all the Live stuff (try and get a standalone/offline installer for the latest Windows Live Messenger...), they're losing my support. MS is FUBAR. Unfortunately, there are too many people who simply do not care or are just plain ignorant, so it'll get worse before it'll get better, if at all.Time to move on. :( Although for the time being, FS9 and XP will do just fine. On hardware that would run FSX and Vista just fine, I might add... :(

Mike,Why 'move on' when your current rig gives you all you require? If FS9 and XP are okay now why wouldn't they be fine in 5 or even 10 years? If you feel so strongly about the direction MS is taking with FS the biggest signal you can send them is not to buy into it. Stay with what you have. :(

[Geofa 108]

You're not being very fair, Geoff, because i never said better hardware doesn't increase performance. Did your move from a single to a dual core also involve an increase in clockrate? Did you and/or your friend also buy a new graphics card? Did you simply replace the CPU, or the entire system? And yes, FSX SP2 does take advantage of multithreading, but FAIK only as far as eye-candy (texturing) is concerned (better ask Phil Taylor about that, after all, he's the expert). So yes, moving from an old PC to a current one would of course entail a (significant) increase in FPS. I never denied that. All I'm saying is that FSX won't make optimal use of the future technological CPU and GPU developments, because the FSX core isn't optimized for multithreading (amongst other things). So basically, you can buy the best hardware available today (as you and your friend did apparently), and what you get now won't be any better than what you might expect the next 3 or 4 years. :(

Yes-but the implication-and it has been spread here-is that fsx will never be truly usable because it does not use the cores for multithreading and therefore future hardware will not make a difference. Present hardware and future hardware will make a difference.The multi core issue is a moot point in my book-performance has gotten better and will continue to with any release of hardware of any kind.As far as "eye candy"-that has always been a relative term. The whole thing is eye candy.

[Mike... 7]

Mike,Why 'move on' when your current rig gives you all you require? If FS9 and XP are okay now why wouldn't they be fine in 5 or even 10 years? If you feel so strongly about the direction MS is taking with FS the biggest signal you can send them is not to buy into it. Stay with what you have. :(

Oh, don't worry, I am. :( I just think that a future sim needs to move in another direction and thus needs to come from someone other than MS.

[Guest Bottle]

Personally I'm sitting back and waiting for a Russian developer to do a properly coded general aviation flight sim. Meanwhile FSX will continue to sit on my HDD gathering digital dust like it has since release and proved itself to be a pig with wings. Rise of Flight and Battle of Britain Spirit of War will keep me occupied in the interim.

[RatRace 4]

Yes-but the implication-and it has been spread here-is that fsx will never be truly usable because it does not use the cores for multithreading and therefore future hardware will not make a difference. Present hardware and future hardware will make a difference.The multi core issue is a moot point in my book-performance has gotten better and will continue to with any release of hardware of any kind.As far as "eye candy"-that has always been a relative term. The whole thing is eye candy.

Well, i wouldn't exactly call the (poor) ATC eye-candy, but OK, better hardware has never hurt the game (only the wallet). :(

[Geofa 108]

Well, i wouldn't exactly call the (poor) ATC eye-candy, but OK, better hardware has never hurt the game (only the wallet). :(

Poor is also relative-try Xplane's atc if you want to see poor. Getting taxiway directions and approaches for every airport in the world (the xplaner's are baffled how aces pulled that one off) is pretty amazing. :(

[Guest JeanLuc_]

I guess I am a wall then. I went from a single core to a dual core and my fps went from 15-20 with no autogen and settings low to 30-40 with autogen and a good deal of settings maxed. A friend of mine who got a quad core gets 40-50 with my same settings, and even more maxed.So better hardware does make a better performance increase.

Hi Geoff,it is true, but partly true because of multi-core though. I think I recall having read that the i7 computes between 5% and 35% faster than quad core at same clock speed. I guess latest quad cores also compute faster than first duo at same clock speed. What you experience might be 75% related to just CPU computation efficiencies and 25% to cores?

[Geofa 108]

Hi Geoff,it is true, but partly true because of multi-core though. I think I recall having read that the i7 computes between 5% and 35% faster than quad core at same clock speed. I guess latest quad cores also compute faster than first duo at same clock speed. What you experience might be 75% related to just CPU computation efficiencies and 25% to cores?

Hi JeanLuc-Sounds like a plan to me.

[virtualstuff 751]

Hi JeanLuc-Sounds like a plan to me.

It's indeed real simple better performance with newer hardware for the next years :(